Sunday, June 15, 2014

DIY -- bagels

A bulk food website wants you to pay $5 a dozen for Lender's plain sliced bagels. That's before you add the shipping costs, of course.
I made bagels one Tuesday. It took about an hour, less than any kind of bread (but see later when I post on English muffins).
I spent $1.60 on the flour and $0.38 on yeast, plus negligible amounts on sugar, salt, and oil. Oh yeah, and water.
Those other $3 that the website charges are for petroleum fuel to run the factory and the trucks and other transportation, for chemical dough conditioners and preservatives. And a tiny amount to pay the employees.
And there's high fructose corn syrup in them instead of plain old sugar.
I used sugar because I didn't want to put any shelf space into keeping malt syrup around, and at any rate I can't find malt syrup in my local store.
You could use honey instead of sugar if you have a thing about refined sugar.
Then I ate my first homemade bagel split, buttered, with homemade blackberry jelly on one side and homemade raspberry jelly on the other side.
I ate my second one with homemade lox and homemade yogurt cheese instead of cream cheese.
I froze some of them and defrosted two to eat on Shabbat (yesterday).

I think it was Mare Winningham's character in St. Elmo's Fire who, when she finally got her own place and freed herself from her over-concerned parents, told her friend Rob Lowe about getting up in the middle of the night and making herself a peanut butter sandwich. "And you know what? It was the best peanut butter sandwich in the whole world."
And it really was.